[tap tap] Hello? Oh, hello…

Just imagine a small rumpled person kicking her heels and staring at the floor while you read this.

So I’ve been a little bit really quite super busy with life admin stuff, none of which involved making a beautiful mess in my kitchen, and so you may have noticed a bit of radio silence around here. Sorry about that. [kick, shuffle]

How very dare I come crawling back, you ask?

Charity bake sale at the office, that’s how.

Basically, I was whipping up a batch of these spiced white-chocolate-chunk beasties over a couple of evenings after work (the dough has to chill overnight – as, quite frankly, do I) and on the second evening, I couldn’t help but notice that, while my new kitchen is minimal on the work surface front, there is much more natural light , which was casting itself rather pleasantly over my cookie dough bothering… Out came the camera phone.

Now, if there’s anyone in all this world who appreciates a succession of baking-in-progress snaps, it’s definitely you guys (looking good, by the way – is that a new haircut?), and no sooner had I started capturing the dough ball dredging and post-oven cookies, I thought: I like this game. I miss this game.

(Then I thought: OMFG this cookie is the best thing ever, if any of these make it to the bake sale it’ll be a miracle.)

So! Seeing as I am now in possession of some rad new mixing bowls, a freshly-scrubbed oven and heaps of natural light (as the season permits, grumble) I’m thinking the baking and the alchemy should definitely resume. A few things about that statement:

First off, how rad could a mixing bowl be, right? Well, if you’re tired of sticking your electric mixer into a pile of flour or, worse, icing sugar, and ending up with more of it on yourself and the kitchen than in the bowl, then this thing is about as rad as it gets:

Ikea, we have our differences, but sometimes I could kiss your big blue and yellow face.

Second thing, you might wonder why I’m so psyched to have so much light by which to snap. It’s more or less an essential for food photography (though hacks are available), particularly as those ‘environmentally friendly’ light bulbs make everything an unfortunate – unappetising – vintage polaroid yellow. Case in point: